Summer is the time of year when teachers can enjoy a break from the the highly scheduled daily routines of the school year. It's also a great time for teachers to engage in professional development to keep up with the challenges of our rapidly changing educational environment and connect with others to build a PLN.I am fortunate and excited to be able to offer a variety of professional development experiences this summer to help teachers embrace change and adjust to the instructional shifts that will ultimately help our students develop the 21st Century Skills necessary for success.

As another school year comes to a close it’s time for students and teachers to celebrate and reflect on all the wonderful experiences from the school year. ThingLink is the perfect tool for creating multimedia memory books to help students capture memories, preserve them, and share them with friends and family across the globe.

Recently I had the opportunity to work with a group of 7 year olds on a very, very short project about bears. My goal was to help these students learn to problem solve as they engaged in research and writing. I decided to use Google Docs Presentation Slides for this project.

Parent engagement has always been a very bright spot on my radar when thinking about keys to success for schools. Lately, it feels important to distinguish between parent engagement and parent involvement. Both are important and something every school should strive for in order to create the most healthy student environment. But involvement, to me, can mean volunteering and spending time in the school and classroom- building those schools that have an instant sense of positive energy you sense the minute you walk in the school.

Teacher Appreciation Week is May 5th -9th this year and ThingLink is an amazing tool for showing teachers how much their efforts are appreciated. It’s fun, it’s flexible and users have access to all the resources available on the world wide web. Anything is possible with ThingLink.

Google has made some changes to the way the Google Drive app works. If you are a teacher using iPads as a tool for learning, you might find this information helpful.

Earlier this week, Google took away the ability to create and edit documents in the Google Drive app and turned that app into a place to access and view resources that are stored in the cloud. Along with that, Google released two new free apps, Google Docs and Google Sheets. Read more on GettingSmart.com